'I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not' CNN Films Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text There is a recently burgeoning genre of documentaries - usually either celebrity or true crime in focus - driven not by aesthetic or storytelling imperatives but by (self-)promotional machinery. They're unscripted movies or series that look at the life of your favorite '80s movie stars or unsolved murders as fodder for breathless online reports titled "10 Things We Learned From..." or "[Insert Famous Person's Name Here] Finally Reveals..." The emphasis is on revelation and not introspection or reflection. In a way, then, a documentary like Angus Wall's Being Eddie, a generally amiable and adulatory 90 minutes streaming on Netflix, fails; with its softly hagiographic approach, the director never pushes Eddie Murphy to any place that feels untapped or confrontational, and therefore newsworthy. Related Stories Lifestyle Chevy Chase Was in an Eight-Day Coma After Heart Failure in 2021; Daughter Recalls Doctors Saying "We Might Not Get Him Back" News 'SNL' Writer Jimmy Fowlie Asks for Support Finding His Missing Sister I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not The Bottom Line A complicated, unresolved portrait. Airdate: 8 p.m. Thursday, January 1 (CNN)Director: Marina Zenovich It is by this standard that Marina Zenovich's I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not is most successful. Ahead of its New Year's Day premiere on CNN, I'm Chevy Chase is already making headlines with its various revelations: his eight days in a coma after heart failure, his disappointment at being unused in the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary special, his general irascibility even in the face of an authorized documentary. I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not is, finally, more about how viewers process these revelations, which almost all serve as various forms of excuse or exoneration for Chase's well-documented "difficulty." Do the things we learn about Chase over these 97 minutes make Chase seem like a better person? Possibly a worse person? Or do they just make him seem human in a way that we often deny our stars? As was also the case with her similarly toned documentaries on Lance Armstrong and Roman Polanski, Zenovich does a better job of acknowledging contradictions in complicated human behavior than reckoning with what those contradictions mean. Her documentaries are particularly flimsy when it comes to linking difficult men with bigger institutional failures. Still, there are worthwhile conversations that I'm Chevy Chase might allow viewers to have. The documentary presents as a straightforward examination of the rise and self-immolation of Chevy Chase, from quirky college crack-up (he was briefly in a pre-Steely Dan band with Walter Becker and Donald Fagen!) to Saturday Night Live original star (he never had a formal contract!) to movie star to movie star burnout to talk-show host burnout to Community star and burnout. The basics of the Chase roller-coaster are familiar and well know - that he left SNL too soon, that lots of drugs were involved, that he developed a reputation as a bully, etc. Zenovich steers immediately into descriptions of Chase as occasionally cruel, often insensitive and, well, an asshole - so much so that she gets deep into the name-calling even before the opening titles. It's hard to avoid, because I'm Chevy Chase is built around Chase's on-camera participation, and in that capacity he is undoubtedly an asshole. "I'm just trying to figure you out," Zenovich, frequently heard but never seen, explains. "No shit. It's not gonna be easy for you," Chase replies. "You're not bright enough." Unlike this year's exceptional Pee-wee as Himself, in which the banter between director Matt Wolf and star Paul Reubens quickly emerges as the heart of the documentary, the cat-and-mouse between Zenovich and Chase doesn't feel productive or based on any artistic tension about presentation and self-representation. It feels like a debate between a documentarian doing her job and a star who probably shouldn't have bothered to participate at all. He's sarcastic, occasionally hostile and only willing to engage on his own terms, more likely to respond to a difficult query with performance - at one point he swats an imaginary fly and eats it rather than talking - than explanation or storytelling of his own. It's left to a solid assortment of talking heads, with very conspicuous absences, to fill in the myriad gaps. Chase's brother, half-brother and a couple of college friends illuminate his pre-fame life. Luminaries including Lorne Michaels, Dan Aykroyd, Rosie Shuster and Paul Shaffer talk Saturday Night Live. Goldie Hawn and Beverly D'Angelo do the honors on his movie career; former agent Mike Ovitz chimes in on his professional choices; director Jay Chandrasekhar is left to cover t